For leaders and managers who need to communicate change, a recent report from the Academy of Management offers a new idea for rallying a team around a new plan. The best way to talk about change is to focus on what’s not changing.

What research says about how we accept change

The findings are based on two studies first published by management researchers in 2019. In the first, researchers surveyed pairs of about 200 employees and their managers at companies that had recently announced a change—like an expansion, a merger, or a new leader. Workers ranked how certain or uncertain they felt about the change, along with what their manager had communicated would remain the same, and managers ranked their report’s support for the change.